Megan J. Browning is a Senior Vice President at George K. Baum & Company. She joined GKB in January 2008, having been selected by the firm to open and manage its first Ohio office. In its first 30 months of operation, GKB’s Columbus, Ohio office has been involved as underwriter or financial advisor in over 120 transactions totaling in excess of $1.7 billion in principal amount. Throughout her career, Megan has focused on infrastructure financing for cities, counties, villages, townships, school districts and states as well as for private developers around the country. Megan’s experience in public finance runs the gamut, having managed transactions using, among other structures, general obligations, revenue bonds, special assessments, tax anticipation notes, and certificates of participation. This experience includes service as underwriter for large subdivisions like the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, to medium-sized issuers like Greene County, Stark County, the Montgomery County Transportation Improvement District, and Lansing Township, Michigan and the Cities of Lebanon, Hilliard, Shaker Heights, Bexley, Brunswick and Mansfield, Ohio to smaller issuers like the Villages of Leipsic and Crestline and Van Wert County, Ohio. Megan has served as financial advisor to the Ohio State Treasurer in connection with the State’s issuance of Highway Bonds and the Ohio Rail Development Commission and as underwriter for the State’s Liquor Profit Bonds. Megan is experienced with many of the new products created by Congress in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and is working on or has closed transactions involving Build America Bonds, Recovery Zone Economic Development Bonds and Recovery Zone Facility Bonds in Tennessee, Michigan and Ohio.

In addition to her work with local governments, Megan has consistently worked to improve the tools available for economic development and public private partnerships around the country. Megan conceived legislation that was passed by the Ohio General Assembly, to greatly expand the powers of special districts in Ohio, enabling them for the first time to effectively use revenues derived from sales, lodging, admissions and other revenues to finance private and public infrastructure.

Megan currently serves as the national investment banker for the Industrial Realty Group, one of the largest owners of industrial property in the United States. Megan is currently working with IRG as its investment banker in its efforts to construct and finance a new world headquarters for Goodyear Tire & Rubber In the City of Akron, Ohio. In addition, Megan has been engaged to serve as investment banker for the financing of infrastructure, using special assessment revenue bonds, benefiting a water park development in Sevierville Tennessee and a series of financings at a lifestyle center in East Lansing Michigan, involving special assessments, lease revenues, and other sources of revenue.

Megan started her investment banking career in 2000 when she was hired by Paine Webber in New York. She joined A.G. Edwards office in Boca Raton, Florida in 2001, where she worked with numerous Florida issuers, including the Jacksonville Electric Authority. In the fall of 2002, Megan joined Seasongood & Mayer, a Cincinnati-based, regional investment banking firm specializing in public finance. In November 2003, Megan helped that firm open its second office in Columbus, Ohio. In 2005, Megan was named partner at Seasongood, the first woman investment banker (non-sales and trading) and youngest individual ever to be so named. Upon the 2007 purchase of Seasongood by the Royal Bank of Canada, Megan was retained and promoted by RBC to the role of Managing Director and was placed in charge of the Columbus office, a role in which she continued until she joined GKB. Megan has worked on over $4.5 billion in transactions over the last eight years. Her growing presence in the Midwest public finance arena is reflected in the scope and complexity of her work and in the fact that she has been regularly asked by the Bond Buyer to moderate panels at its public finance conferences. Most recently she served on a panel with the Treasurer of the State of Ohio.

Megan received a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she ran varsity track. She also completed the pre-medical curricular focus. Today, Megan lives in Worthington, Ohio across the street from her childhood home with her four dogs Winston, Theodore, Franklin and Rex. She is a member of the Worthington United Methodist Church. Megan serves on the Board of the Justice League of Ohio, a victim’s rights organization recently featured in People Magazine, and currently serves on Central Committee for the Franklin County Republican Party and sits on the Judicial Screening Committee. She also serves as a member of the Central Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Industrial Properties.